Five years ago this week, massive protests toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, marking the height of the Arab Spring. Empowered by access to social media sites like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, protesters organized across the Middle East, starting in December 2010 in Tunisia, and gathered together to speak out against oppression, inspiring hope for a better, more democratic future. Commentators, comparing these activists to the US peace protesters of 1968, praised the effort as a democratic dawn for an area that had long been populated by autocracies. In a photo collection published by the New York Times a few months later, Irish writer Colum McCann wrote: "The light from the Arab Spring rose from the ground up; the hope is now that the darkness doesn’t fall.”

Question

The darkness has fallen. Half a decade later, the Middle East is roiling in violence and repression. Activists are being intimidated into restraint by governments that are, with the exception of Tunisia, more totalitarian than those they replaced, if any government as such really exists at all. Meanwhile, militants have harnessed the same technology to organize attacks and recruit converts, catapulting the world into instability. Instead of new robust democracies, we have a global challenge with no obvious solution. The Arab Spring carried the promise that social media and the Internet were going to unleash a new wave of positive social change. But the past five years have shown that liberty isn't the only end toward which these tools can be turned.

Activists were able to organize and mobilize in 2011 partly because authoritarian governments didn’t yet understand very much about how to use social media. They didn’t see the potential, says NYU professor of politics Joshua Tucker, a [principal] investigator at the Social Media and Political Participation Lab at New York University. "There are a lot of reasons the people in power were slow to pick up on this,” he adds. "One of the things about not have a free press is it is harder to learn what was going on in the world.”

Which statement best evaluates the evidence in this excerpt?

The author uses verifiable facts and expert testimony to support her argument effectively, but the excerpt would be stronger if she deleted references to a past protest.
The author uses specific data, reasons, and quotations to support her argument effectively, but the excerpt would be stronger if she included eyewitness testimony or personal stories.
The author uses quotations and data about historical instances to support her argument effectively, but the excerpt would be stronger if she included verifiable facts.
The author uses eyewitness testimony and personal stories to support her argument, but the argument would be stronger if she deleted the quotations from experts.

Answer 1

The statement that best evaluates the evidence in the excerpt is:

The author uses specific data, reasons, and quotations to support her argument effectively, but the excerpt would be stronger if she included eyewitness testimony or personal stories.

This is because the author provides a well-rounded argument by integrating historical context, expert viewpoints, and the consequences of the Arab Spring, but it could benefit from personal narratives that illustrate the impact of these events on individuals or communities.